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May 7, 2008

Problems Are on the Horizon

But what problems?

The last of the four missing Claremont Ras Shamra tablets that I have been discussing is RS 1957.2. I've waited so long to post on this tablet because I couldn't make up my mind on an important place name in line 5. How one reads this name is key to understanding this tablet. I'm still not sure how to read it but I thought, enough is enough. So, depending on how you see it; I settled on the best reading possible as supported by another likely related tablet; I ignored the few traces on the tablet that might point to something else (but what?); I succumbed to my own unwarranted understanding of the relationship between this tablet and another one; or just I got tired trying to figure it out and took a stab in the dark. A photo of a case of the obverse of RS 1957.2 is to the right. The actual tablet is brown. Here is my tentative reading of the text and my translation. The tablet was first publisher by Astour in Fisher, 1971.

[If you see squares, rectangles or something else that doesn't look right, please install the Charis SIL font.]

Obverse
1) [a-na LUGA]L EN-ia
2) [qi-bi-ma um-ma ^md]UTU.LUGAL ÌR-ka
3) [a-na] GÌR.MEŠ EN-ia am-qut
------------------------------------
4) [an]-ni ^ma-gi₅-^dIM DUMU.KIN-ia
5) LÚ ˹^UR˺[^U] ˹ar-ma-na˺
6) it-t[i-ia] ù it-ti ^mta-te-ia
7) i-na ^URU˹ba-ṣi-ri˺ in-nam-mar
8) ù ṭe₄-ma ki-ia-am
9) ˹a-na pa˺-ni ^m˹ta-te-ia˺ iq-ta-bi
10) DUMU. MEŠ ^KUR[ X X ]-ka a-kán-na
11) [iq-bu a-na DUMU.MEŠ] ^URU[GEŠTIN(?)]-na

Reverse
1) [          ] UD
2) [          ] it-ti
3) [   ]it-˹ti˺ [          ]
4) it-ti ú?[          ]it-ri it-it
5) a-bi[          ]
6) ? [          ]šu
7) [          ] ˹qa˺ šu
8) [          ] na ka nu
9) [          ] ^dUTU X
10) [          ]UD^? ia

Left Edge
1) [      ^URU]na-ni-i
2) [      ^U]^RUni-i X
3) [          ] LUGAL

1) [To the kin]g, my lord
2) [say, thus says] Šapaš-milku, your servant:
3) [at] the feet of my lord I fall down.
------------------------------------
4) [N]ow Agi-Teššub, my messenger (or envoy),
5) a man of the city of Armāna (ʿrmy?),
6) met with me and with Tateya,
7) in the city of Baṣiri
8) and the following news
9) was reported in the presents of Tateya.
10) "The people of the land of [??]-ka have thus
11) [said to the people of the] city of [Yē]nā (?),

The reverse is basically unreadable but a couple of the place names on the left edge are interesting. I will discuss them below.

As you can see, just when the story gets interesting the tablet becomes harder and harder to read. But subject to all the concerns expressed in the boring notes below, I have an idea about how this tablet and another one provide the beginning and part of the ending of a story we otherwise know nothing about. The other tablet is RS 19.78. RS 19.78 is a legal document attesting that "the commander of a thousand and his sons are free from the hands of Agi-Teššub, the man of Armānu." Actually, Agi-Teššub frees the commander from some unspecified obligations under an oath. Our tablet, RS 1957.2, seems to indicate that Agi-Teššub knows of something bad that is about to happen in the Lower Mountains district of the Kingdom of Ugarit. On the basis of RS 19.78, Agi-Teššub may well be part of the plot but is keeping his options open by reporting to Šapaš-milku who then reports what he has heard to the king of Ugarit. Intrigue is in the air. The exact nature of that intrigue is hard to say. On the Assumption that RS 1957.2 and RS 19.78 are pieces in the same puzzle, it is hard to know which of them came first. My best guess is that RS 1957.2 was written before whatever the issue might have been came to a head and RS 19.78 was part of the resolution of that issue. But his is only a guess. I've already written on RS 19.78.

Notes on names and other abnormal things:

First, a note of the geography of the place names on this tablet: Two places with indisputable names on this tablet, Baṣiri and Nanu'u, can be located with reasonable certainty in what van Soldt, 98, calls Group 3: The Lower Mountains. This region is roughly equivalent to what Astour, 1981, 12, calls the North Western district and the most northern part of what he calls the Peidmont district of Ugarit. As will be seen in the notes below, I have given preference to identifying towns as being in this district when readings or locations are in dispute and one reasonable choose is van Soldt's Lower Mountains group 3 north and northeast of the city of Ugarit but west of Nahr Zegharo were it runs from north to south.

Ob 2. ^mdUTU.LUGAL, Šapaš-milku might be the scribe known in Ugaritic as špšmlk who worked during the reigns of Arḫalbu and Niqmepa. But as Astour, 1971, 24, points out, there was more than one person of that name. The text has an unusual spelling and a possible West Semitism that likely preclude this Šapaš-milku from being the famous scribe. By the way, while I doubt it, perhaps we should read this name Šapaš-šarru as if it were an East Semitic name rather than a West Semitic name.

Ob 4. ^ma-gi₅ -^dIM, "Agi-Teššub:" a person with a similar (same?) name is known from RS 17.340:3 and elsewhere to be the king of Ni'i. But see below. Ni'i may be is mentioned on the left edge of our tablet. But it's hard to believe this is Agi-Teššub king of Ni'i because he is called here DUMU.KIN-ia, mar šipri-ya, "my messenger." Agi-Teššub is a common Hurrian name, well known from all over the general area. I believe the more common spelling of this name at Ugarit was ^ma-gít-^dIM. An Agi-Teššub LÚ ^URUAr-ma-na written the same way as on our tablet appears in RS 19.78. RS 19.78 has the impression of Agi-Teššub's Hieroglyphic Hittite seal. The sign that I read as KIN, Astour, 1971, 24, reads as two signs ZU WA. And would have us understand the line "Now Agi-Teššub, brother of Zuwaya" He is correct that zuwa is an element in several Hittite names. But I think we are on firmer ground reading DUMU.KIN-ia, mar šipriya, "my messenger." See my tracing, imposed on the photograph on the left. I worked from the photograph but with reference to the cast. The wedges in the photograph to the right of the last wedge I traced are the first wedges in the indisputable IA sign. To be sure, the KIN sign is not perfectly formed but it is also on the curved right edge of the tablet. One might expect a LÚ determinative before DUMU but EA 45:19, a letter from Ammistramru, king of Ugarit, to the Pharaoh, also lacks the determinative in the same phrase. And while some examples like EA 45:19 and EA 47:12 use a phonetic determinative, ri, others like RS 19:70 do not.

Ob 5. LÚ ˹^UR˺[^U] ˹ar-ma-na˺, man of the city of Armana: As noted above Agi-Teššub LÚ ^URUAr-ma-na can be read on RS 19.78:11-12. While Astour, 1971, 25, is aware of this Agi-Teššub, he preferred to read the city name ^URUdu-˹un˺-na citing Mesopotamia and Anatolia possible identifications. I've discussed various problems this proposal earlier. However, after careful study of the cast and the published photograph, I believe Astour underrepresented the difficulty of the reading. Van Soldt, suggests that this name be understood as equivalent to the place whose name written in Ugaritic ʿrm(y/n), "ʿArmu." The -na in the Akkadian and the y or n in Ugaritic are likely gentilic. See, for example, ʿrmn in the phrase bn ʿrmn in KTU 4.93 II:13. While a Dunna is unknown in Syria, ʿArmu is in the same district as are the other cities mentioned on this tablet that can be identified with reasonable certainty. Astour reading what I read as DUMU.KIN-ia as DUMU zu-wa-ya, "brother of Zuwaya," in line 5, may have discouraged him from reading Armana here. For the sake of completeness, I should note that Huehnergard, 1987, 723, identified the URU˹ar˺-ma-na of RS 19.78 as Ḥarmānu to the south of Ugaritic about midway from Ugarit to Siyannu rather than in the Low Mountain area northwest of Ugarit. The real problem with my reading ˹^UR˺[^U] ˹ar-ma-na˺ is that the traces on the tablet do not clearly support it. But I don't see that they support Astour's reading either or any other coherent understanding for that matter. Your results may vary. RS 19.78 is a legal document attesting that "the commander of a thousand and his sons are free from the hands of Agi-Teššub, the man of Armānu." RS 19.78 is impressed with the hieroglyphic Hittite seal of Ag/kitešub.

Ob 6. Tateya, also mentioned line 9, is not otherwise known.

Ob 7. ^URU˹ba-ṣi-ri˺: the city of Baṣiri is very well documented in both Ugaritic and Akkadian texts from Ugarit. It is worth noting that is comes immediately after ʿArmu in the city lists KTU 4.610:16-17 (van Soldt's, 98, reading), 4.693:40-41, 4.621:3:4 and 9.338 (RS 92.2001). It is likely that the two towns were very near each other.

Ob. 8. The ṭe₄ in ṭe₄-ma ki-ia-am is somewhat unusually. The verb is usually written with ṭe, ṭè or ṭé at Ugarit. See Huehnergard, 1989, 372, 393.

Ob 10. Astour, 1971, 25, speculates that ^KUR[ X X ]-ka might be the land of Lâka known from Alalach. I would add to the speculation by suggesting either [ma-lu-]ka (see RS 17.150:8) or [na-ba-]ka (RS 17.150:35). Nothing excludes Nabaku from being in the Lower Mountains region of Ugarit but nothing requires that it be there either. We just don't know where it is. Malukku is likely in van Soldt's, 113, Group 8, south of Ugarit along the coast.

Ob. 11. [iq-bu a-na DUMU.MEŠ] ^URU[GEŠTIN(?)]-na: As Astour, 1971, 25, correctly points line 10 ends with akanna introducing direct speech, the reconstruction of iq-bu a-na is logically justified. See Astour's, 1971, 25, discussion of the syntactical anomaly. "One would except the predicative at the end." As he says, West Semitic interference may be in play. My reading ^URU[GEŠTIN(?)]-na, is an extrapolation that assumes that -na is a phonemic determinative following an ideogram. The only town commonly written this way is Yēnā, also in van Soldt's Lower Mountains region. Along with Yēnā (Yana), Astour, 1971, 25, also suggests Qaṭna, Pana, and Šamna. Of these, Šamna is also in the Lower Mountains region of the kingdom of Ugarit and has equal claim with Yēnā to be restored here.

Edge 1. ^URU]na-ni-i (Nanu'u) is a town in the Lower Mountains region. Based on the town list cited in the discussion of line 7, Nanu'u is very near ʿArmu and Baṣiri.

Edge 2. ^U]^RUni-i X: Astour, 1971, 26, reads this as the well known city Nii, likely on the boarder of the Kingdom of Ugarit in the Orontes Valley. But he seems to ignore the function of the final, difficult to read, sign that he indicates with an X. I've tried unsuccessfully to read something other than Nii. The broken sign may be the beginning of a UR sign that at Ugarit and elsewhere can stand for lig/k/q and there may have been room for one additional sign. It is tempting to read this last or next to last sign KA but the wedge traces do not support such a reading.

Final Remarks:

This badly broken letter brought news that some intrigue was brewing. Whatever it was, it was important enough to bring to the attention of the King of Ugarit. An interesting possibility based on an unusual spelling and a likely but somewhat ungrammatical reconstruction is that the scribe who drafted this letter was not in the same tradition as most of the scribes who served the city of Ugarit.

At some time, I should take up the two tablets from the Claremont Ras Shamra Tablets that are not missing. As I've said, they are now part of the Martin Schøyen Collection. Both of these tablets inform two quite different but significant bodies of secondary literature. Both are abnormally interesting in very different ways. A good post on either will take a lot of work and neither obviously informs my own current research directions. So, it may be a while before I get around to them.

References:

Posted by Duane Smith at May 7, 2008 7:07 PM | Read more on Ugarit |

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